Recording produces white noise even with the microphone unpl

Before I go into to detail, I don’t know much about recording, I use a headset to record audio and i have the regular realtek drivers. So I was performing a test of my microphone today and i noticed there was some not to loud but definitely noticeable white noise in the background. I tried messing around (turning on and off) some of the recording settings, nothing happened, then i tried recording with a program other than audacity. That didn’t do anything, I tried a different microphone, still white noise. Then finally I just unplugged the microphone, and surprisingly there was still static. Please help with my issue.

So this is the built in sound card in your computer?

That is indeed electronic noise, most likely coming from the microphone preamp itself (which is why it’s the same with the microphone unplugged).

All preamps have this sort of noise, it just a question of how load. The cheap ones you find in built in computer sound cards are often pretty bad.

The question is how load is this noise compared to your voice? If that was a “raw” recording (ie you didn’t amplify it after the fact to make the noise
louder) then that noise is at a pretty high level.

You might want to scour the control panels looking for any sort of “enhancements”, some audio drivers can provide AGC/compressor functionality on the microphone signal, which is a great thing for skype, and a terrible idea for serious recording.

SOLVED

I just re installed the drivers and now it works fine